‘Piedi per terra’ – the serious message behind Toto Wolff’s joke with Italian media

If you are looking for smiling faces in the paddock these days, Mercedes is the place to be. In recent years — with all the struggles in the ground effect era — things have often been very different at the three-pointed star, but perhaps that baggage makes the sense of relief even greater now.

When Wolff appeared in the hospitality area an hour after the race to speak to the media, he first reached for the sanitiser to clean the champagne off his hands. “If this keeps going like this with the wins, you’ll run out of disinfectant,” one of the journalists joked. Wolff responded wittily: “Well, I’m fine if I end up with no skin left on my hands because of the champagne!”

After a regulation cycle in which Mercedes never really got things right, the team that dominated from 2014 onwards is now back in a position to win races again. And as Shanghai showed, that is even the case with two drivers.

Of course, George Russell had technical issues during qualifying and the battle with the Ferraris gave Antonelli a welcome buffer in the race, but the Italian has still shown himself to be mature, quick and consistent throughout the weekend.

Okay, perhaps with the exception of one moment in the late stages - but Wolff could laugh about that lock-up in the hairpin. “It's just that Kimi can't help himself with another fastest lap, and then another fastest lap. We know the pattern from Monza, from his first FP1.”

Wolff was referring to Antonelli’s first-ever F1 practice session, in which the young Italian started strongly with purple mini-sectors, but crashed heavily in the Parabolica. Mercedes wanted to avoid a repeat of that scenario while Antonelli was on his way to his maiden F1 win.

“So I said to Bono, 'come on, let's tell him to calm down.' But he said, 'no, I think he's in a groove.' I replied, 'he may be in a groove, but we don't want him to lose this race.' Then he missed the braking [point] and I said, 'okay, now you calm him down.' So yeah, very good,” Wolff continued.

Andrea Kimi Antonelli, Mercedes

Photo by: James Sutton / Formula 1 / Formula Motorsport Ltd via Getty Images

Wolff suggests an alternative headline for Italian media

Halfway through the media session, Wolff addressed the Italian press in the room with a smile. The experienced team boss could already predict what Antonelli’s victory would trigger in Italy, a country that had not had its own Grand Prix winner since 2006. In a country full of passion for motorsport — and for sport in general — Wolff knew what it would mean.

“You can kind of see the hype that is going to start now, especially in Italy. I can already see the headlines, world champion, Grande Kimi and whatever. And that's really not good, because those mistakes are going to come. He's just a kid, so it's too early to even think about a championship.”

Wolff said it with a smile, but there was definitely a serious undertone to it in two different ways. First of all, Wolff wanted to guard against unrealistic expectations and immense pressure on the shoulders of his 19-year-old driver. The past has proven to be an important lesson in that regard.

“I think we need to keep the feet on the ground. You need to write that in Italy also, the biggest risk is [the pressure], so please help him"

Toto Wolff

In addition to the aforementioned crash in Monza, Wolff also has the race weekend in Imola last year in the back of his mind. Everyone wanted something from the youngster in Emilia-Romagna, after which Antonelli admitted that it had all been somewhat overwhelming.

“I think we need to keep the feet on the ground. You need to write that in Italy also, the biggest risk is [the pressure], so please help him. Because remember last year, Grande Kimi and whatever it was, and then came Imola and there was an avalanche of pressure.

“There shouldn't be any pressure at the moment. So, piedi per terra, or how do you say it?,” Wolff suggested the Italian headline — an alternative to ‘Grande Kimi’.

This is reinforced by the fact that F1 — like all sports — is very much a week-to-week business. “This sport that we live in is manic depressive,” Wolff said — often describing himself as a glass-half-empty kind of person. “Today, it's great. In two weeks, we are in Japan and he puts it in the wall and people say he's too young.”

Andrea Kimi Antonelli, Mercedes crash

Photo by: Alastair Staley / LAT Images via Getty Images

‘You need 20 qualities, but Kimi has the one you can’t learn’

Besides a smart degree of expectation management, there is also a second reason behind these words. Wolff knows that this is only Antonelli’s second F1 season and that mistakes are still inevitable. About the debut year, several Mercedes figures said “there were moments of brilliance, but at times we were tearing our hair out”.

That will happen again this year. Not for nothing did Antonelli admit on Saturday, when asked by Autosport, that his “risk versus reward management” still needs to improve. It was visible in Melbourne with his crash during the third practice session, and such moments are likely to occur more often this season.

It is inherently part of the development process of any young driver in F1, although Wolff is willing to give Antonelli all the time he needs. The Austrian knows he has a rough diamond on his hands — one that will repay his patience without any doubt in the (maybe near) future, as China has already shown.

The things Antonelli may currently still lack are, according to Wolff, all learnable. That does not apply to raw talent — and that is something the second-youngest F1 race winner clearly does not lack.

“As a driver, you can learn a lot. If you drive many laps in whatever category, in go-karting or junior formulas, you will come to a certain level, but you can never learn raw speed. And you see that immediately in every category. Make it rain and you're going to see a quick kid in go-karting,” Wolff said.

“These are things you can't learn. Everything else you can learn. He has that and there are not many that have it. You can be a Grand Prix winner without having it. You can maybe even fight for a world championship if the odds are in your favour with a good car. But to become a really big champion, that is necessary.

“Having said that, that's not enough to become a great champion. It needs the maturity, the personality. He needs the humility, the intelligence, and the empathy from the team around him. There's like 20 factors that matter to become a great world champion. But the one you can't learn, he has.”

All things considered, Wolff’s remarks on Sunday evening — urging fans to stay calm now — clearly have two underlying reasons, and rightly so: on the one hand, it's smart expectation management from the Austrian, and on the other simply reflecting the reality of a still very young F1 driver. Either way, the message remains unchanged once the champagne has dried in Mercedes’ hospitality unit: piedi per terra.

Andrea Kimi Antonelli, Mercedes

Photo by: James Sutton / Formula 1 / Formula Motorsport Ltd via Getty Images